Enough

The word enough has many and varied meanings, but have you ever sat down and tried to work out what is enough? Or more importantly when enough is enough? Well the dictionary describes it as “Occurring in such quality, quantity or scope as to fully meet demands, expectations or needs”.

So what’s the point in working this out, precisely? The answer to that question would put most philosophers out of business and it is, for me, “When you know what is enough the you can stop trying to acquire it and simply enjoy it”

What that doesn’t tell us is what level is enough, and when enough is enough? Both very challenging questions to answer as the answer varies from one person to another, as it is an opinion-based level of response. We can vaguely work out what is not enough, as a grain of rice is not enough to keep a grown elephant alive, and we can also work out what is too much as fifty cream cakes (yum yum) is much more than enough for lunch.

Pinpointing what exactly is enough is much harder, as it is based on need and desire. If you desire a lot then your enough point is going to be higher than if you desire a small amount.

As a rule of thumb, the lower your materialistic aspirations are the easier it is to pinpoint exactly what is enough, and at the other end of the scale where the acquisition of money is your only goal then there is never enough, so there is no enough point and also no rest point.

Then on to the ‘enough is enough’ level. Again, knowing what this is has great benefits as it changes you from a tolerant peace loving creature into a fighting beast. So knowing what you will or will not tolerate is an essential part of this level. Again there are upper and lower extremes of when enough is enough. Ironically it works the other way round to material acquisition, as the greater your tolerance then the faster you can be peaceful, and, the other way around, the lower your tolerance level the harder it is to reach peace point.